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George
Open letter to the Prime Minister:
Last night I witnessed you commenting on New Zealand’s first known case of the Covid-19 virus. You were at pains to promote the success of this intervention as an example of your Government’s readiness and competence to handle such an event. So much so that you described your Government’s intervention as, “Being dealt with in a textbook fashion”. I don’t know which textbook you were referring to but it clearly had the first chapter missing. And this chapter exposes the truth. Let us rewrite the missing chapter so that the New Zealand public can be fully informed.
An Emirates flight departed from Tehran bound for Auckland. It had been extensively reported that up to 210 Tehran citizens have already died from Covid-19 and many more thousands are ill. The second most contagious nation behind China is Iran.
Red alert one.
The Emirates flight lands in Auckland with almost exclusively Iranian passengers.
Red alert two.
A 60-year-old Iranian woman falls ill on this flight.
Red alert three.
What happened next? All passengers disembarked, cleared customs and made their way to their final destinations. None of the passengers, including the sick woman, were subjected to health checks,. A catastrophic failure at our border. It should have been glaringly obvious that procedures should have been put in place to screen these passengers; but they weren’t. Why not?
It was the family of the stricken woman who showed leadership and self-managed the intervention that resulted in the hospitalisation of this Covid-19 patient. It was only then that our health system became involved. Your Government’s procedure failed dismally.
Imagine the consequences had this family not taken responsibility. We now have hundreds of potential carriers of Covid-19 in our midst and the best you can suggest is to “self isolate”. Had your Government shown real leadership and, quite frankly, common sense in considering all the relevant information at your disposal, there would have been a “red alert” intervention at our border. I do not understand how you have the audacity to stand up on national television and claim the high ground.
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